Rex Peterson, left, talks about his new outdoors show, "Horns and Hooks" as his son Max, 4, listens in on Tuesday morning at Peterson's home in Olympia.
Rex Peterson holds his 6-year-old son, Tyce, as he look out the kitchen window into their backyard at their home in Olympia on Tuesday morning.
A copy of "Horns and Hooks" magazine sits on Rex Peterson's dinner table as he and his son, Max, 4, and Peterson look through videos of the show on his laptop on Tuesday morning at their home in Olympia.
Rex Peterson, left, talks about his new outdoors show, "Horns and Hooks" as his son Max, 4, casually listens in on Tuesday morning at Peterson's home in Olympia.
Alaska has “Ice Road Truckers,” Louisiana has “Swamp People,” and now, the Pacific Northwest has “Horns and Hooks,” a hunting and fishing reality television show that will premiere on ROOT SPORTS April 7.
By, for and about outdoor enthusiasts, the show taps into a virgin market, according to Chehalis native Rex Peterson, one of its creators.
Peterson, along with hunting buddy Jesse Kollman, two years ago started a magazine of the same name; they hope the television show — which will broadcast to more than 3 million viewers — will promote the magazine, which currently has about 2,000 subscribers.
"Hopefully us showing our adventures on the show will make viewers want to share their stories in the magazine," Peterson, 35, said about the publication, which consists primarily of reader-generated content.
Peterson and Kollman, 54, of Hoquiam, filmed their pilot episode last June, on the hope that ROOT SPORTS would pick it up.
In that half-hour segment, the men board a boat and set out in search of sixgill sharks in Willapa Bay.
"So we get to the boat launch and this place is absolutely beautiful," Peterson narrates. "There's Roosevelt elk on the shoreline, there's eagles flying overhead, there's oyster bays all over the place."
"This slew is pretty shallow, I'm thinking we're going to putter out, but Captain Kelly takes off at 45 miles per hour," Peterson continued. "I was scared to death."
Out in the water, off the coast of Grays Harbor County, the fishermen reel in several 8-foot, 300-pound sharks.
"It takes a while," Peterson tells the camera, while struggling to hold onto the shark on his line.
"After a 20-minute battle we finally got it up next to the boat," he said, "and that's when the action really began."
ROOT SPORTS, it turned out, liked the show and picked it up for a 13-episode season.
Filmed on Sony MX5D and edited with Final Cut Pro, the approximately $5,000 pilot episode was financed entirely by its creators.
Peterson and Jones also paid for the next 12 episodes.
The show, and the magazine, could, of course, at some point become lucrative. But at the moment, both are labors of love.
"It's a huge risk," Peterson said. "Jesse and I are just trying to fulfill our dreams of living a lifestyle of hunting and fishing."
An outdoorsman born and raised in Chehalis, Peterson ventured on his first hunting expedition when he was 2 years old. Since then, he has traveled the country in pursuit of adventure.
"I'm just consumed with hunting," Peterson, a 1995 graduate of W.F. West said in an interview with The Chronicle Tuesday.
At his Olympia home, heads of mule deer, antelope and elk border his living room, and a stuffed black bear on all fours watches over the master bedroom.
For the Petersons, hunting is a family affair.
Sons Tyce, 6, and Max, 4, recently accompanied Peterson on an elk-hunting expedition.
"That was probably the most emotional trip for me," said Peterson, who learned to hunt from his father and grandfather. "Taking my boys hunting for basically the first time, when they actually seen us harvest an animal, they were really excited."
Peterson's wife, Nona, doesn't hunt, but supports her husband's obsession.
"I like the organic meat for my family,” she said, though she jokes that if Rex brings home any more trophies, they're going to have to get a bigger house.
The avid outdoorsmen has never stopped hunting, even when, 16 years ago he lost his right arm in a car wreck.
"I learned to do things differently," he said. The "hooks" in Horns and Hooks refers, of course, to fishing hooks but also addresses Peterson's prosthetic hook; beating others to the punchline, without taking it too seriously.
"There's some irony there," he said.
Despite the challenge, for Peterson, the primal connection with nature, the feeling of being alive — those are essential components of who he is.
"We're all either hunters or gatherers. Thousands of years ago that’s how we survived," he said.
"Seeing the animals, being part of their world, that's number one," he said. "I'm not really a spiritual person, but if I was any sort of religion, it would be nature."
